Saturday 2 July 2005 around 5PM. At the pump after a mere 9 hours in the queue in order to thankfully and triumphantly receive 25 litres! The man in front of me is filling plastic containers and holding coupons for 100 litres of fuel purchased at 69 US cents per litre (about 3 US Dollars a gallon) in stark contrast to the 'strict' enforcement of a 'no containers' ruling. It struck me that at this United Nations fuel depot, where only UN and NGO vehicles were meant to be filling up, only about one in every 20 vehicles seemed to be from the UN or an NGO ... and that every litre being purchased had been purchased with foreign currency, the vast majority of which must have been black market transactions. Where there's a will there is a way it seems.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday before heading to the airport. A man has been importing fuel as a business, his tanker going over border, filling up and coming back into Zimbabwe. Using 'creatively acquired' foreign currency, he was recently picked up by CIO agents and questioned for 12 hours or so. His creative acquisition is in a grey area of law so they reluctantly had to let him go, after a warning and steps to close the business operation. A couple of weeks later, the CIO themselves are short of fuel, so they call him to ask if he can get them some! 'I can't, you shut me down' ... and presto, they are organising him with all the 'right' permits so he can bring in fuel for them, same system, now suddenly legal and fine.
People ask me about petrol rationing ... and why the Zimbabwe government doesn't simply reintroduce a system that has worked well at several times in the past, but the answer is simple: they could not organise a fair and efficient rationing system. It seems that this government is not capable any longer of organising or administering even the simplest project or programme without massive inefficiency and immediate corruption.
No comments:
Post a Comment